Kaduna State Government in northern Nigeria has announced free education for female students in its post primary schools.
A total of 191,445 female students who are currently in the public schools would benefit from the gesture estimated to cost N143.587 million every term and N430.791 million every year.
The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Ja’afar Sani who announced this at a news briefing in Kaduna, Northwest Nigeria, explained that government’s decision had become necessary in order to remove all obstacles against the girl-child in acquiring education in the state.
”We hope by this gesture parents will have no excuse not to send their girl-child to school and significantly increase enrolment and retention of the girl-child in school.This was in line with the significance the current administration placed on educating the girl-child.
“It will be recalled that that the female students were accorded priority when the government distributed 15,000 tablet computers to secondary school students.” Sani noted.
Sani who acknowledged supports from some philanthropic organisations also said that about 900 million and 70, 335 million Naira have been expended on girl-child scholarship and female teacher support respectively under the World Bank’s 21.5 million dollars grant for Global Partnership for Education project.
“Similarly, Mercy Corps Foundation in collaboration with the education ministry had equally returned 100 married women dropped-out back to school. You can see that Kaduna State has demonstrated its resolve in many ways for female students to receive the best of education.
“This we are doing by removing any hindrance on the way of the girl-child in acquiring quality education,” the commissioner said.
He restated that the state government has recruited additional 13,606 qualified teachers for its public primary schools, including a PhD holder.
This exercise, Sani explained, completed the recruitment of 25,000 vacancies announced after the sacking of about 22,000 alleged unqualified primary school teachers in January 2018.
Sani added that apart from the one PhD holder, 8,494 out of the 25,000 recruited teachers were first degree holders, while the rest were National Certificate in Education (NCE) holders.
